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The Polaris Short List Salon: Ottawa – S10E02

On Tuesday night, The National Arts Centre played host to the Polaris Music Prize Salon as the Polaris jury members discussed the 2014 Polaris Short List and who would win it. For the Ottawa edition, Steve Jordan, the founder and Executive Director of Polaris Music Prize moderated while the panelists consisted of Ryan Bresee (CKCU), Roch Parisen (Rochon Communications),and John Sekerka (CHUO).

The panelists and Jordan discussed the ten albums and what were their best and worst from the 2014 edition of the Short List. One of the topics raised at the Salon was the criticism of this year’s Short List having seven of the ten albums being repeat and returning nominees. The Ottawa jury didn’t have an issue with it whereas Canadian music fans in general have complained about it. Jordan also mentioned about the future of the album as a whole with what people buy and listen to.

The albums that were garnered a lot of discussions were Drake, Mac Delmarco, Tanya Tagaq and Timber Timbre because it brought in the positives and negatives in terms of artistic merit coming from the Ottawa jury. Mac Delmarco was contentious as Bresee said that it was not his favourite from the short list and the same went for Drake as Parisen and Sekerka weren’t fans of his album.
All in all, it was a fun Salon as I missed out last year’s event but made it up by going to the aftermath of the Polaris Gala at POP Montreal. It was nice to get poked fun by the founder of Polaris Music Prize.
From my experience, the Ottawa Salons had more laughs than the ones in Toronto (at NXNE this year) and Montreal (last year) I have attended.

The Gala will be happening on September 22 and will be live streamed on AUX.tv.